Choosing Fresh Fruit for Canning

Certain kinds of fruit take to canning much better than others. Depending on what kind of fresh fruit you want to can, you need to follow a different procedure to get that fruit ready for canning.

Here are fruits commonly grown in home gardens or sold at farmers markets:

Apples: Choose apples suitable for eating or making pies. Peel the skin and remove the core from your apples with a vegetable peeler. Cut the apple into slices or quarters. Treat the fruit with an antioxidant to prevent discoloring.

Apricots, nectarines, and peaches: Peel the fruit, cut it in half, and remove the pits. Treat the fruit with an antioxidant to prevent discoloring.

Berries (except strawberries): Select perfect, not soft or mushy, berries. Leave them whole. Wash and drain the berries (handling them as little as possible); remove any stems or hulls.

Figs: Ripe figs have a short shelf life — about two or three days. Pick fruit that’s firm to the touch.

Grapefruit and oranges: Mix grapefruit and oranges for a sweet and tart flavor. Use white grape juice for your filling liquid in place of a sugar syrup.

Pears: All varieties of pears can well, so use your favorite variety. After cutting and peeling the pears, treat your fruit with an antioxidant to prevent discoloring.

Rhubarb: Rhubarb looks like red celery but isn’t related to celery. Although rhubarb is a vegetable, it’s treated like a fruit because its acid level makes the rhubarb safe for water-bath canning.